Sales & Contracts reference

A sale ties a pup to a buyer with a price, deposits, a contract and the pup's microchip. It's created when you assign a buyer to a pup, and opens from Sales & Contracts or the pup page. Most of a sale is worked out for you; you set just a few things.

Purchase price

The full price of the pup. You set this. It drives the balance and appears on the contract. Until it's set, the sale shows the deposit only.

Deposit amount

The amount you ask the buyer to pay up front to reserve the pup. You set it either when you create a deposit link (the buyer pays by card, into your own Stripe account) or when you record a payment you've already received in cash or by bank transfer. Both land on the same ledger. See Take a deposit and Record a cash or bank-transfer payment.

Payment method

Every payment on a sale carries the method it arrived by, and Whelpkeep never hides it:

• Card via Stripe — shown as Confirmed by Stripe. A verified payment: it can't be edited, marked paid or removed by hand, and refunds happen in Stripe.
• Cash, Bank transfer, Other — shown as recorded by you. Your own record of money you received. You can correct, refund or remove it.

The same distinction appears on the buyer's receipt and in the evidence pack's payment ledger.

Date received

For a payment you record yourself: the day the money actually changed hands (not the day you entered it). It can't be in the future. This is the date the buyer sees on their receipt. Card payments use the date Stripe confirmed them.

Reference

Optional note on a recorded payment — a receipt number, or a bank transfer reference — so the ledger line matches your own paperwork.

Balance

What's left to pay: purchase price minus everything received, whether paid by card or recorded by you. Worked out automatically — you don't edit it. When payments cover the price, the sale reads as paid in full.

Go-home date

The earliest date this pup may leave. Defaults to the litter's whelp date plus eight weeks (the legal minimum) and is used for the balance-due reminder. You can adjust it, but not earlier than the legal minimum.

The three tracks

A sale shows three tracks. Financial and Contract move on their own as you work; the Chip track is the one you set yourself:

Financial track

Follows the money: no deposit → deposit paid → paid in full. Driven by the payments received and the purchase price. A cash payment you record moves it exactly as a card payment does.

Contract track

Follows the agreement: no contract → drafting → pending signature → signed. See below. A new contract starts from your own wording if you've saved some, otherwise from Whelpkeep's standard contract — either way the compliance block, consumer-law note and signature block are added automatically.

Chip track

Follows the pup's microchip: chip pending → chip lodged → transferred to buyer. You set it yourself under Status & admin on the sale — it doesn't change on its own when you upload a microchip certificate or enter the chip number.

• Chip pending — the pup isn't chipped and registered yet.
• Chip lodged — the pup is chipped and the registration is lodged (usually by your vet). For most breeders, this is where your part ends.
• Transferred to buyer — the chip's ownership has been moved to the buyer, which the buyer often does themselves after go-home.

Overall status

Each sale also shows one overall status:

• Active — still in progress.
• Completed — paid in full, contract signed, and the chip lodged or transferred to buyer. All three must be true.
• Cancelled — you cancelled the sale. You can re-open it — unless you've since started a new sale for the same pup, in which case the cancelled sale links to the new one instead.

Contract

Whelpkeep drafts the sale contract for you, filling in the parties, the pup, the price, the compliance and ID details, and the state-correct legal wording — including the NSW cooling-off and refund clauses where they apply. If the pup's most recent Insurance record has a confirmed policy number, the standard contract also lists the policy number — and the insurer, if you've confirmed that too. With your own wording, use the {{insurer}} and {{insurance_policy}} placeholders. You Save it, then Send for signature. The buyer signs online on their puppy page by typing their full name. Once signed, the contract shows Signed with a full audit trail: who signed, when and their IP address.

Contracts are a snapshot

A contract is drafted once, from the pup's details at that moment. It doesn't update itself afterwards — for example, a chip number you add to the pup later doesn't appear in a contract that's already drafted. Until the buyer signs, you can edit the contract yourself, and the sale page warns you: if a line of the current compliance stamp (chip number, vaccination, your breeder ID and so on) isn't in the contract, it lists the lines that are missing so you can update them before the buyer signs.

Correcting a signed contract

You can't edit a signed contract — the same as a signed paper one. To fix a mistake, agree it with your buyer, then cancel the sale, start a new sale for the same pup, re-enter the price, and draft and send a new contract for them to sign. Payments carry over because they belong to the pup, and the old signed contract stays on the cancelled sale as a record (that sale then links to the new one and can't be re-opened). The price, notes, chip status and gone-home marker need setting again, and the go-home date returns to the default. Step by step: I made a mistake in a signed contract.

The evidence pack

At handover you can download an evidence pack — a single PDF gathering the stamped details and the litter's compliance checklist — to give the buyer or keep for your records. There's also a pre-filled draft email to the buyer you can send from your own email.